A full military guard of honour and the singers of the Berlin Bach Choir tried their hardest last night to make Gordon Brown's first foreign trip as prime minister into an event of ceremony and spectacle. But Mr Brown seemed determined to take the opposite approach, meeting two foreign leaders - the German chancellor and the Irish taoiseach - in the course of a single, lightning-fast day, delivering him back to Downing Street in time for the News at Ten.

The pageantry awaiting the prime minister outside Berlin's vast glass cuboid chancellery is a tribute paid to all new leaders: even if he were to grow accustomed to it, Mr Brown will not experience such a welcome on future visits to see Angela Merkel.

Much was made of his choice of Berlin over Washington for his first foreign trip, with German newspapers interpreting it as a sure sign of a shift away from Tony Blair's focus on the US. The liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung said it was "noteworthy" that Mr Brown had "not yet even fixed a date for his inaugural visit in Washington".

But the prime minister's spokesman warned against reading too much into the order of his visits: Mr Brown had already spoken to Mr Bush three times since coming to office, including a video-conference session at the weekend, he said.

In the event, the Berlin trip was little more than a hello: 90 minutes were allotted for a meeting between the two leaders, over supper in the building's eighth-floor, bulletproof glass-panelled dining room adjoining Mrs Merkel's office. Climate change, counterterrorism and EU issues, including the new European constitution, were expected to be on the agenda.

But the two have common ground beyond politics: they were both born to strict Protestant pastor fathers, and make much of their love of literature. The mood differed significantly from his last visit, a year ago, when Mr Brown was kept waiting while a meeting between Ms Merkel and the king and queen of Jordan overran.

Earlier in the day, Mr Brown met the Irish leader, Bertie Ahern, in Belfast, but only somewhat reluctantly: Ian Paisley, Northern Ireland's first minister, had insisted on an "east-west" meeting between Britain and Ireland before today's north-south ministerial meeting, where politicians from Dublin and Stormont will discuss cross-border issues.

Previous prime ministers on inaugural trips have made great show of soliciting public goodwill on the streets of Belfast, but for Mr Brown there was no walkabout, no stroll up the Shankill or down the Falls Road. Instead, the prime minister arrived on an early flight and dashed to the parliament building, perched on a hilltop above east Belfast: for once, its air of splendid detachment matched the mood of faintly puzzled political abstraction. Then he made a speedy getaway before the British-Irish Council - which brings together the leaders of the British, Irish, Northern Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Manx and Channel Islands administrations - had completed its deliberations. Mr Brown was a politician in a hurry, in danger of reinforcing the dawning perception that Westminster believes the Troubles are sorted out, and is mentally disengaging.

Mr Brown praised the taoiseach as one of the architects of the Good Friday agreement, hailing the "historic" era opening through the success of Northern Ireland's power-sharing executive. He rejected the suggestion that funding the province's government would prove difficult because Northern Ireland's booming southern neighbour was a more attractive prospect for business.

"I believe that we have entered into a new historic time for Northern Ireland," the prime minister said. Details of the £51.5bn investment package for the province would be unveiled in the comprehensive spending review in the autumn, he promised.

Mr Brown used his brief appearance before the cameras to hand out one news line guaranteed to catch the media's attention: fresh security proposals to prevent terrorism, urging closer European cooperation on anti-terrorist surveillance. Neither the UK nor Ireland are members of the Schengen agreement on border controls, and they are expected to be excluded from information-sharing on biometric visas when they come into force within the EU in 2009.

Mr Paisley and his deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, watched from nearby, listening and chatting amiably to one another. Later, inside Stormont's Great Hall, Mr Paisley put his arm around the shoulder of the prime minister, in a proprietorial gesture of welcome. They held discussions for 45 minutes before Mr Brown raced to the airport.

· This article was amended on Saturday July 21, in line with a printed correction in the Corrections and Clarifications column. The Isle of Man had slipped off during the editing process from the list of participants in the British-Irish Council. This has now been corrected.